Eyes brimming with sorrow locked onto Subaru and refused to let go.
A sensation surged through Subaru's chest—the urge to scoff at
—Wait, what did you just say?
He should just repeat the nonsensical words that had grazed his ears moments ago, roll them across his tongue, and hurl them back at Beatrice. He should curl the corner of his mouth into a grin and toss out a casual quip like he always did. It was just a slight—yes, just a slight—shift in the winds. That was all.
Because if he didn't— "———"
He couldn't deny the 'joke' of the desperate girl staring at him right now.
"Wait... what did you just say?"
After a moment's hesitation, a slight beat of silence, Subaru spoke the line he'd prepared. If he could keep the smile on his face and give a casual shrug, it would be perfect. But— "...Ah."
Subaru's cheek seized up. Forget a shrug—his fingertips wouldn't move either. It was as if the very existence of
"Shall I repeat it for you, just as you wish?"
"W-Wait..."
"I want you to end Betty with your own hands."
"Stop it!!"
Subaru's voice roared out, cutting off Beatrice's words.
It was a bizarre reversal of roles—a kind of absurd exchange. Before, Beatrice had refused to hear what she didn't want to hear, and Subaru had forced his argument on her until she screamed. So even knowing that, he had no right to condemn her for doing the same to him.
"Do you have any idea what you just said..."
"Do you, on the other hand, have any idea what was just said to you?"
"What?"
"I'm offering to let your existence be the last thing in this spirit Beatrice's life. The 'person' who finally brings an end to the contract that has bound me for over four hundred years—I'm making you that person."
You should be honored, Beatrice said with a thin smile that didn't suit her sarcasm. Her parched smile—looking at it, Subaru felt something claw at his chest with twisted, grasping fingers.
It was unbearable. Pressing a hand to his chest, Subaru said: "I don't get it... Are you saying you want to die?"
"That's not precisely what I mean. Betty wants the contract to end. I simply want to be freed from the eternal contract that has bound this body for so long."
"If the way to do that is to take your life, then how is that any different from wanting to die?!"
Subaru stamped his foot, his voice cracking with fury. Gospel pages scattered at his feet were crushed under his heel, but he couldn't care less. Pointing a finger, Subaru glared at Beatrice and bellowed: "Don't say something so stupid like you want to die! You can say that in front of anyone else—but saying it to me, in front of me—that I will not allow!"
If you die, you can never get your life back.
Natsuki Subaru alone can redo things even after death. That's why he alone can present a justification for throwing away his life—because it has value. But Beatrice was different. Everyone else was different.
Once life is lost, it can never be recovered.
And yet, saying that in front of Subaru— "What do you mean you want it to ended?! Don't just say whatever you want! Acting just to bring things to a close... just to die—even if anyone else would accept that, I never will!"
"What a selfish thing to say. —What do you know about Betty?"
But Beatrice's response to his outburst was cold and hard. She flicked her skirt and rose to her feet, touching the tips of her curled hair with a finger: "It has been four hundred years since Betty became the guardian of knowledge and took charge of the Forbidden Library. For four hundred years... Betty has simply been waiting for that moment, following the contract."
"Four... hundred years..."
That phrase again. Subaru grimaced, suppressing the urge to click his tongue.
Four hundred years. An era when the
"Forming a contract with the Witch, taking shelter under the Mathers family, and at first, following the inscriptions in the Gospel and simply—solemnly—waiting for that day to come."
"———"
"But as I waited, the world outside kept on turning. The head of the Mathers family, who had been in the same position as Betty, died of old age, and the role passed to the next generation. Betty watched the head change again and again, yet Betty's own time flowed on without changing."
For Beatrice, what an agonizing span of time that must have been. Her flat, detached way of speaking only vividly reflected how her heart had been worn raw by the relentless passage of time. Even Subaru, just listening, felt a chill creep over him.
"Not once during those days did Betty know when the promised day would come—nor who 'that person' would be when they arrived at last."
Still, Beatrice shook her head: "There was no anxiety. Because Betty held the Gospel in her hands. All Betty had to do was believe in the Gospel where the future was written, and wait for that coming day to be added to its blank pages. If Betty waited, that day would surely come... Betty kept believing that."
"But..."
Looking down at the page crushed under his heel, at its utterly blank surface, Subaru understood the cruelty. Beatrice, sensing the meaning of his gaze, nodded.
The Gospel, which should have been her hope, had eventually— "Every day, checking over and over whether the text had changed... that became agonizing."
"............"
"How many times Betty dreamed of new words being written on the page after the last entry. Again and again and again, imagining that day when 'that person' would finally come, and Betty could fulfill the role she had been given."
"...Beatrice."
"The Mathers family wasn't exactly lacking in visitors, you know. Plenty of humans had come to the Forbidden Library before. So many people had placed their hands on those doors... and every single time, Betty's heart was betrayed."
Because every person who pushed open those door was not 'that person.' How many times had disappointment piled up? How many times had she repeated that crushing letdown? As expectations continued to be betrayed, her heart gradually wore thin, and resignation filled her eyes.
Again and again, those who came after betrayed Beatrice's hopes. Eventually, she stopped expecting altogether—because holding on to the faint possibility of someone arriving only to have her soaring heart smashed back into the ground again was a pain she could no longer endure.
It was only natural that a heart that had endured so much for so long had finally begun to crack.
"And somewhere along the way, Betty realized... no, perhaps Betty had always known."
"Known what?"
"That the Gospel would never show Betty a next entry."
Beatrice knelt down and picked up the spine of the Gospel that had fallen at her feet. All the pages had tumbled out, leaving only the cover—lonely in a way that was almost palpable.
Tracing a finger along the spine she'd picked up, Beatrice prefaced her words with "Did you know...?": "The Gospel records the future of its holder. The more precise the content depends on how small the margin of error between the holder and the world's memory—the closer the two, the clearer the writing."
"The world's memory...?"
"The memory of the world, yes. —The world already knows not only the present and the past, but the events that will unfold in the future. The Book of Wisdom is a forbidden text that draws necessary knowledge from that source. The Gospel inherits only a portion of its function."
It was
"...Then how did that technology leak after Echidna's death? The Gospel was supposed to be inherited by only two copies—yours and Roswaal's."
"Who knows, and who cares. Whatever copycat made counterfeits and distributed them to whomever has nothing to do with Betty."
"Then why did you bring up the Witch Cult just now?"
"I had a use for the Witch Cult's Gospel. You simply jumped to conclusions."
Even with Subaru's provocative tone, Beatrice didn't take the bait, maintaining her composure. She asked Subaru, "Do you have the Witch Cult's Gospel?" He nodded in reply: "I don't have it on me right now. I brought it into the
Right now, the only Gospel Subaru possessed was the one that had belonged to Petelgeuse. The others—the ones held by the Cult members who had been Petelgeuse's fingers—had been destroyed by their conscious bearers before death. The few that had been recovered were entrusted to Crusch's camp for further handling.
Ideally, he would have brought Roswaal back from the Sanctuary early and discussed the contributions from the
"Did you look through that one?" Beatrice asked.
"I can read it now, apparently, so I skimmed it. The handwriting was like a worm crawling across the page, which made it brutal, but most of it was bullet-pointed information. Personally, though... rather than a prophecy of the future, it looked more like a set of instructions from the future."
He recalled the Gospel that he'd apparently been able to read thanks to Echidna's influence. Most of Petelgeuse's Gospel described where Petelgeuse would go and what he would set in motion. Much of the process leading to those outcomes was omitted, essentially leaving the means of arriving at those results up to the bearer's judgment.
So rather than an all-seeing prophecy, the Witch Cult's Gospel was more like a signpost on the road to the future—one of many—that was all. That was how Subaru understood it.
"If everything about the future were perfectly predicted, we'd have no way to stop it ourselves. It makes sense that an incomplete version would be like that."
"I'm not particularly interested in the content. What I needed to know was whether the bearer's final moments were recorded."
"I don't think it recorded his 'final moment,' exactly."
Subaru recalled the last page of Petelgeuse's Gospel—the one where Subaru had written 'The End' in his own blood. The final line that the Gospel had inscribed in its own role, before that— "In the Mathers domain, a trial with the silver-haired half-devil."
It was a remarkably sloppy line that told Petelgeuse nothing about what would happen before or after.
So if the information the Gospel provided was that limited, it made sense that Subaru, with his own advantages in future information, couldn't be outdone by the Gospel's precision.
"——Yes, that's what I thought."
Hearing all of Subaru's available information, Beatrice nodded as if the pieces had fallen into place. Then the girl bent the cover still in her hands: "Did the Gospel add any text after that?"
"...No, it shouldn't have. At least, from what I checked, the last entry corresponded to the bearer's final action. And there couldn't have been anything added after that, because—"
He was about to voice the conclusion when he realized what he was about to say, and his throat froze. And that realization laid bare the intent behind Beatrice's question.
He looked up. Before him, Beatrice wore a faint smile—that empty, utterly hollow smile she had shown him so many times in their brief encounter, the one that spoke of nothing but void.
"—The Gospel recorded no further entries because the bearer's future ends there."
"Y-You and that guy are different..."
"Are we? In the sense that the Gospel records no future for us, the only difference is whether we still exist or no longer do. —Can you really say it's different?"
"It's diff—!"
His instinctive denial was blocked by Beatrice's emotionless gaze before it could reach her. Surface-level, hollow comfort was not what her heart sought. This question already had its answer inside Beatrice.
Gritting his back teeth so hard they might crack, blood seeping from the corner of his lips, Subaru said: "Wh-why... why do you have to—"
"............"
"—reach conclusions all by yourself?! Anyone! When you're carrying anxiety and brooding alone, your thoughts spiral in exactly that kind of direction! That this is the only way left—and before you know it, you've convinced yourself that the worst outcome right in front of you is the truth!"
Subaru knew this because he himself had crashed against hardship so many times, lamenting his own helplessness each time.
The repeated malice, the obstacles that never disappeared, the walls of the world that closed in as if whispering that they were impossible to overcome. Those forces demanded you stand against them alone—and when you fought by yourself, they wrapped their dark fingers around your heart.
So— "If you were thinking it was painful, that you wanted someone to do something about it—then all you had to do was say one word! Reach out to someone so they'd understand! If you'd just said you wanted help, that you were in pain... then I—!"
When you're cornered in a dead-end of fate, when you're drowning in the despair that you can't climb out alone—just look around yourself. Only then do you finally notice the hand extended toward you. When you take that hand, when it pulls your frozen body forward with strength, only then do you realize— There's still no need to give up.
"How many times have I... so this time, let me...!"
"...I want someone to do something about it."
"Yes... just like that, reach out!"
"I want help... I want to be saved..."
"Yes! Yes, yes, yes! That's all you need to do!"
"I'm sad, it hurts... Betty wants you to save her from this darkness..."
"Then leave it to me—"
Small, trembling fingers reached out toward Subaru.
Overwhelmed, driven by some incomprehensible force welling up from inside, Subaru reached for Beatrice's hand.
He had completely forgotten why he'd come here. The truth was, he'd called out to Beatrice because he'd been hoping she could give him the power to break through his own dead end. He'd wanted her to be his ally.
But now that he knew the pain she carried—the darkness in her heart—he could no longer think that way. All that drove him now was a sense of mission: to save this small girl who was being tormented by loneliness.
If he took her hand, Subaru would be shouldering yet another burden he could never set down. He was already weighed down by more than he could handle—and yet Natsuki Subaru was reaching out to take on still more.
But that was fine. Because— "———"
—How could he possibly leave behind a girl who looked at him with trembling eyes like those?
Beatrice was trying to rely on him.
That stirred in Subaru an emotion almost too much to bear. He didn't know why. It didn't matter. His very soul was screaming.
Help her. Save her. She is— "I will definitely—"
"Please..."
Her outstretched fingers reached his.
He caught her clumsy, halting hand firmly, drawing it close, interlocking their fingers, pressing their palms together.
Subaru looked Beatrice straight in the eye. His reflection filled her glistening pupils. And then, from those eyes, large tears spilled forth— "—I want you to kill Betty."
—She refused the comfort of an easy salvation and brushed his hand away.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ Why? Subaru's throat drew in a breath to voice the question.
He'd meant to look at his empty hand—grabbed at nothing, fingers grasping thin air—at Beatrice who'd done it, and ask her why.
"———"
But he couldn't do it, because Beatrice's eyes as she looked at him were too, too, too—irrevocably, too far gone.
"Four hundred years... all alone?"
"Bea... Betty..."
"'That person' never came, and Betty spent four hundred years entirely alone."
He couldn't tear his eyes from Beatrice's gaze. Calling her name—even that much felt like something Subaru hesitated to do.
"How many times Betty thought of giving up. How many times Betty wished to forget everything. A hundred times, a thousand times, ten thousand, a hundred million—it still wouldn't be enough..."
In this narrow, dim room, Beatrice had spent an eternity in solitude. Hugging her knees on that stepladder, waiting for someone whose face and name she didn't know. Surrounded by a sea of books as far as the eye could see—she read them all, and still the person she waited for never came. Not even the books meant to show her the future showed her anything.
How many times had solitude killed this girl's heart?
"She wants help...? She wants someone to do something...?"
"...Ah."
"How many times does Betty think you had that wish? Did you really believe Betty never once considered it and simply gave up?"
Her halting words gradually grew heated. Subaru, in turn, felt the fire that had been blazing inside him suddenly freeze over, his limbs growing heavy as if filled with lead.
He could neither move for the girl before him nor run away.
"If I reach out, you think I can pull you from this darkness with no end in sight? You think I can show you the answer to a dead-end that never resolves?"
"............"
"If you... if you say you'll do that... then why... why..."
She lowered her head, her voice breaking through tears. Beatrice's expression was hidden from view, and suddenly Subaru's heart was swallowed by an inexplicable darkness. His footing wavered; though Beatrice was close enough to reach if he simply stretched out his hand, he felt as though he'd lose his way trying to get there.
He was afraid. He hesitated. And in that moment, Beatrice raised her face.
He was glared at. The girl bared her teeth: "—You left Betty alone for four hundred years!?"
"—!!"
"I was alone! The entire time! Always, always, always, Betty was alone in this place, spending empty time! I was lonely! I was scared! I was abandoned—I couldn't fulfill the role I was given, the promise was never kept, I couldn't even decay with time—I was made to spend eternity all by myself!"
Tears spilled from the girl's large eyes, one after another. Rolling down her cheeks, falling from her chin to the floor—each heavy drop striking the ground landed like a blow to Subaru's heart.
"You're going to save me?! Rescue me?! Then why didn't you come sooner?! Why did you leave Betty alone?! If all you have now are kind words, then why didn't you just embrace me from the very beginning?! Why did you let go?! Why?! Why did you leave Betty by herself?!"
Her words became blades, flames, steel—wounding Subaru's heart in turn. In every form, in every way, as every kind of pain, they tore into him.
Beatrice's argument was the height of unfairness, as far as Subaru was concerned.
Four hundred years—most of the time she had spent in solitude had nothing to do with Subaru at all. He'd only known her for about two months. To her, that was merely a blip—too soon or too late, nothing more. It couldn't have been salvation. If he'd wanted to argue with cold logic, he could have said as much.
But what good would such a meaningless rebuttal do? It wouldn't save anyone—neither Beatrice, nor Subaru, nor anyone at all.
And Subaru was forced to realize just how badly he had underestimated the time this girl called Beatrice had endured.
Four hundred years. —It was four hundred years.
On paper, it might not seem like much. In the stories of popular fiction, four hundred years was nothing. There were tales of absurd spans of time, stories where the world cycled through its timeline. Compared to those, four hundred years was hardly anything.
Was he an idiot? Was he really? Just how far gone in foolishness was he?
He had lived with only an unsolvable riddle as his reason to exist for four hundred years—no. That was her. She had. And yet the words "four hundred years" had seemed like nothing more than three simple characters.
How could his flimsy words possibly heal her four hundred years of solitude?
"Words like 'help'... a rescue of 'someone do something'... those wishes had long since dried up over these four hundred years..."
"............"
"Or are you going to tell Betty that not a single human ever tried to lead Betty out of here? Betty is a high-ranking spirit. There were more than a few who sought Betty's power and tried their hardest to take Betty away."
This was the first Subaru had heard of it. Others before him had tried to free Beatrice from the Forbidden Library—and the result was her existence as it stood today.
Looking at Beatrice with her still-weak gaze, Subaru shook his head: "D-Don't lump me in with those people! I just want to..."
"There may have been a few soft-hearted ones like you who ignored Betty's power entirely and simply wanted to save the person standing in front of them..."
"———"
"But they couldn't take Betty away. Naturally."
Because, Beatrice continued, pausing to draw a breath, wearing that fleeting, fragile smile once more: "The contract binding Betty to this place cannot be broken by half-hearted resolve. A contract that bound Betty to her role for four hundred years... it cannot be so easily shattered by some human."
"How... then—"
"—Make Betty your number one."
The words, thrown at him, were so quiet—yet so sharp.
Subaru felt as though a thin needle had pierced his eardrum.
"What... did you say?"
"Make Betty your number one. Think of Betty first. Choose Betty first. Overwrite the contract. Paint over the contract. Smear out the contract. Pull Betty out. Draw Betty close. Embrace Betty."
"———"
"You could never do that. Not in a million years."
Beatrice's plea was earnest, desperate, heart-wrenching. It was the product of a wish so heavy that a casual nod was absolutely unacceptable.
"Your number one has long since been decided, hasn't it? That silver-haired girl, or the blue-haired maid... either way, you could never push them aside to make Betty number one. You simply cannot. It's something you cannot do."
"A contract is absolute. Absolutely. To overwrite a contract by anything other than its fulfillment requires an equivalent price. Betty no longer believes—can no longer believe—that the promise will ever be kept. So the only other path to freedom... is through destruction!"
Two girls pounding at Subaru's heart. When he thought of them, his heart leaped, raced, burned. It was an answer engraved into his soul—one that could never, ever be changed.
"So... break Betty's contract... and destroy this body that served no purpose and wasted all that meaningless time... won't you?"
"The contract... is that heavy? If you don't want it, can't you just override it with your own will...?"
He couldn't find an answer. He didn't know what to say to Beatrice. And so his answer was the cowardly one of deflecting the question elsewhere.
For an instant, disappointment flickered in Beatrice's eyes. To Subaru, it felt like a fatal mistake.
"That contract... is the reason Betty exists."
"The contract... is?"
"Betty was born for this contract. Betty lives for this contract. The role Betty was given at birth, the contract Betty has never once fulfilled since the day she was born... and you want Betty to selfishly break it? Is that what you're saying?"
"It's not selfish! You've been holding on for four hundred years! You've kept one promise all that time—and who could possibly blame you for that! Who could condemn you! You've done more than enough already—!"
"I haven't fulfilled a single duty! I threw away the meaning of my birth, the reason for my living—and you think that's enough to go on living?! No one will condemn me?! Betty condemns me! Betty will never accept that! The spirit Beatrice will not permit such a cowardly existence!!"
Subaru stepped forward on trembling legs, reaching out to grip the small girl's shoulders and speak to her. But the girl looked up and shoved him back with an even louder voice, pushing against his chest to create distance again. Her frail strength still managed to push Subaru's body.
His body wouldn't obey. He couldn't even remember what he'd been looking at.
"For spirits, a contract is absolute! The contract with the contracted party is above all else! Nii-cha is the same! Nii-cha prioritizes that silver-haired girl above everything! She's his most important! His most beloved! Between Betty and that girl, he would absolutely choose her! Nii-cha wouldn't make Betty number one either!"
As fellow spirits, Beatrice had been closest to Pakkusu of anyone. Perhaps it was a desperate bond—the kind that comes from sharing a span of time that no human could ever accompany, four hundred years that only another spirit could share.
What feelings Beatrice harbored for Pakkusu, and what Pakkusu thought of Beatrice—Subaru didn't know. But that unknown was already something Beatrice had resolved within herself. She'd had more than enough time to wrestle with it and arrive at an answer.
Her breath was ragged, her shoulders shaking, even her once-neat curls coming undone. Large tears welled in her big round eyes, and her trembling lips still flickered with weakness and pleading.
She seemed so impossibly small to Subaru. Why had everyone left this tiny girl alone for so long?
"You know... that you're not 'that person' from the promise..."
"———"
"But will you become 'that person'? Or rather, not 'that person'—will you become something even greater and save Betty?"
"———"
Words wouldn't come. He couldn't casually agree, let alone impulsively deny.
In this brief time, Subaru had learned even a fraction of the doubt and anguish that Beatrice carried—something he had never even tried to understand before. But to truly comprehend her solitude, Subaru himself would have to spend four hundred years alone, just as she had. That was something utterly impossible for a human. Her suffering, her loneliness, her sadness—they could never be within Subaru's reach.
"No one understands hopelessness better than Betty."
"Beatrice..."
"So kill Betty. With your own hands. Suicide is also a violation of the contract—something a spirit can never do. So Betty can't even die alone."
"Why me...?"
Beatrice reached out both hands, pleading.
Subaru was afraid to accept those hesitant, trembling fingers—afraid of how feeble his grip would feel—so he covered his face with both hands instead: "Why are you entrusting your end... the end of four hundred years... to me..."
"Why...?"
He could have called them whining, weakness, excuses—but Beatrice chose none of those words. She tilted her head as if even she didn't know the reason.
After a pause, she slowly nodded.
"—Ah, now Betty understands."
"............"
"The reason Betty entrusts her final moments to you is surely... surely—"
If he heard that answer, there would be no turning back. He knew it with certainty. He looked up—he had to stop her from speaking, cover her ears, shut her mouth before the answer came.
His decision was too slow. His realization came too late. No matter what he did, it wouldn't make it in time.
Beatrice's lips began to form the answer.
It was coming. And in that instant— "I hate to interrupt, but—"
A voice that should not have been heard reached them, and a chill seized Subaru's body, spinning him around.
And he saw.
"—Would you like me to become your 'that person'?"
Standing at the entrance, dripping with blood and dangling a kukri knife, was a pitch-black killer.